Stand up and rejoice! A great day is here!
We're fighting Jim Crow and the victory's near!
Hallelujah! I'm a-travelin', Hallelujah, ain't it fine.
Hallelujah! I'm a-travelin' down freedom's main line!

—1961 freedom song1

TRUE TO WILKINS'S PREDICTION, Farmer's directorship of CORE began with
a gallop. His first day on the job, February 1, 1961, was the first anniversary
of the Greensboro sit-in, and all across the South demonstrators were engaging in commemorative acts of courage. As Farmer sat at his desk that first
morning waiting for reports from the Southern front, he made his way through
a stack of accumulated correspondence. Among the letters that caught his
attention were several inquiries about Boynton v. Virginia, a recent Supreme
Court decision involving Bruce Boynton, a Howard University law student
from Selma, Alabama, arrested in 1958 for attempting to desegregate the
whites-only Trailways terminal restaurant in Richmond. In December 1960
the Court overturned Boynton's conviction by ruling that state laws mandating segregated waiting rooms, lunch counters, and restroom facilities for interstate passengers were unconstitutional. With this ruling, the Court
extended the 1946 Morgan decision, which had outlawed legally enforced
segregation on interstate buses and trains. But, according to the letter writers, neither of these decisions was being enforced. Why, they asked, were
black Americans still being harassed or arrested when they tried to exercise
their constitutional right to sit in the front of the bus or to drink a cup of
coffee at a bus terminal restaurant?

At a late-morning meeting, Farmer relayed this troubling question to
his staff. To his surprise, two staff members had already come up with a

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